


Mind of Love

by fatdumplings



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1, Barduil - Freeform, Barduil Mini Bang, Fluff, M/M, Some angst, thranduil is really pretty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 01:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11197638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatdumplings/pseuds/fatdumplings
Summary: Five times Thranduil renders Bard speechless and one time Bard returns the favour.





	Mind of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Check out [amazing art ](https://drappersky.tumblr.com/post/161817735378/made-for-the-barduil-mini-bang-check-out-the-fic) by @drappesky!

**One.**

“My people are doing well,” Bard nods. “Some troublemakers — supporters of the old Master, you know — tried to disturb the peace today, but they didn't manage to do any real harm.”

Thranduil sweeps his hair across his shoulder in a vague, fluid motion. He smiles at Bard from beneath pearly lashes, his eyes catching the candlelight. 

Bard takes a bite of his dinner, and lets his eyes wander. Though they are in a makeshift tent at the margin of Mirkwood, he has never seen anything more enchanting. Carefully splintered wreaths ornament the gleaming gray Elven fabric that form the walls around them, variegated foliage softening the corners. The sound of running water ebbs and flows around them, a gentle rill whispering in the evening. 

It is not the first time Bard has been here, of course, dining with the Elvenking after a day of rebuilding his city in the aftermath of the war, but he doesn't think he will ever tire of it. Sure, his people will have the food and shelter they need to survive thanks to Mirkwood’s generous aid, but the chill in the air does not do anything to raise his spirits. The weather has turned bitter, and the wind drags over the town’s debris in a haunting, everlasting breath. Within weeks it will be dreadfully cold. 

So Bard lives for these sessions, having wine with Thranduil in the sheltered beauty of this tent. He whiles the gentle hours away speaking with him, and watches the shifting candlelight throw shadows around his hair, his eyes, and the fine angles of his face. 

He rather likes Thranduil. 

“I am glad to hear this,” Thranduil says. “Do not worry. They should be subdued soon; it’s only a matter of time. And your children?”

Bard grins, leaning back against his chair and feeling the sore muscles in his back relax, just for a moment. “They are alright. They are… they are sleeping better, at least. And Bain and Tilda have started playing outdoors in the mud again. They are very keen to see you, you know.” 

“Indeed?” Thranduil leans forward on an elbow to gaze at Bard, eyes glinting. A tingle shivers, unbidden, to the tips of Bard’s fingers. 

“They've been besotted with Elves since they first saw one of your kind, to be honest. You know full well how human children get at the thought of magic and Mirkwood and those of you who _walk in moonlight_ , and all that.”

Thranduil laughs, soft and silvery. With long, fluid fingers, he lifts his crystal goblet to his mouth with his eyes fluttering shut. The wine and the light tinges the edges of his lips a rich, earthy crimson — just for a second, before he shifts his head and the moment passes like a wispy breeze. He sets his goblet back down before him and it makes a gentle clink, soft and starry as the white petals adorning his hair today. The vague night light from the sky outside diffuses in through the openings of their tent and slants across his smile. 

He catches Bard’s eye from across the table, slow, purposeful, his head tilted to one side. 

Something stirs, deep and warm, in the pit of Bard’s stomach. He stares, and stares, and stares. 

—————

**Two.**

“Dance with me.” A familiar, delicately firm weight presses against Bard’s side, and golden taffeta hair brushes against his cheek. Thranduil smells of flowers and vines and rich ancient Dorwinion, and his scent curls through Bard like incense, like a dream. 

Bard breaks into a grin. 

“Sorry.” He stretches the word out, long and playful, turning to face the deliberate pout curving the Elvenking’s lips. “How much have you had, Thranduil? To think so optimistically of my abilities in _dancing_?” 

Not that he is _that_ object to dancing with Thranduil, of course. 

(Maybe next time, though. And the time after that. And after that…)

Fine Elven music twirls around the halls, fluid and tearaway. Shimmering through the air from harps, sharp glissandos become entrained in the laughter, song and dance that flows around them. Elves are lounging about elegant, gypsum tables, gesturing and drinking. Maidens are laughing and threading their fingers through each other’s hair. Across the room, a troupe of dancers has started up a graceful number, forest green robes swishing and fanning out in glimmering sighs. 

Bard cannot quite believe he is here, really. It is one thing to enjoy the Elvenking’s company in Laketown, by the boats and the houses and the slate-paved roads. It is quite another to be invited to his very halls in Mirkwood, surrounded by merriment and opulence and botanic finery, watching Thranduil’s gestures growing with every drink from his goblet. 

Like now. 

With an actual _giggle_ , Thranduil leans over to rest his chin on Bard’s shoulder. His pale arm wraps itself around Bard safely, possessively. His hair falls against Bard’s chest in a flaxen wave, and Bard’s stomach contracts — just a little. 

Thranduil presses so near to him he is virtually in his lap. Bard feels warm all over, blurred around the edges. He registers the concentrated heat of Thranduil's hands on him, the delicious closeness of his body. Thranduil is gazing up into him with fingers curling around his collar, and his eyes are a stunning, mischievous blue. 

“How drunk are you?” Bard laughs. He feels warm all over and his extremities are tingling. Everything is bright, lucid, and soft. It must be the wine. 

“Not really…” Thranduil hums. 

He is so beautiful like this, with a rare softness in his shoulders and a glint in his eye. 

God, he is so beautiful. 

“You should get to bed, Elvenking,” Bard says gently. “Will your people not talk if they see you so intoxicated?” Unbidden, he wraps an arm around Thranduil’s waist and strokes a hand through his silky hair. 

“My people actually enjoy merrymaking, Bard. I am really starting to think that you should, too.” 

He pushes himself closer to Bard, pressing up against his arms with his mouth by his ear. The music goes up a notch, twirling and spiralling and rich, and Thranduil’s lips curl into a slow, deliberate, grin. 

“Though, Dragonslayer,” Thranduil leers, warm breath ghosting across Bard’s neck. “I would certainly not mind going to bed if it is with you.” 

And then he is sliding off Bard’s lap, laughing and reaching for a fresh goblet of wine. 

He throws his lovely head back for a final wink, and takes all the air with him.

—————

**Three.**

“You look unwell, Dragonslayer. What is keeping you up?” 

Thranduil beckons to him, and his voice is silvery in the cold night air, like the pale stars drifting atop them in a misty sheen of white. It smooths over Bard’s skin and over the suffocating tightness in his murky chest. Bard bows his head to look away from him. His throat is choked and he is trembling, and he does not trust himself to speak. 

It is one of those nights again. 

He is in Mirkwood again, but this time, it is winter, when the sunless bowers are cold and dark. 

As Bard readied his chambers for rest, a gray throb started in the back of his skull, a herald of a sleepless night, of grief. The dense darkness seemed to take on a form of its own, wraithlike and terrible. It sucked at his aching head and pressed in on him, drawing dizzying visions to the forefront of his eyes — thoughts that had lingered just out of sight, pressed into elusive crevices.

It still happens, these nights, after four whole years. After four whole years and seven long months and fourteen ripe days that still buzz faintly with emptiness. It still happens. 

Bard knew better than to stay in bed and attempt to sleep. To remain longer in inaction meant that, when the inevitable onslaught of slick, shapeless imagery crawled over him, he would not be able to fight back. The macabre would slither like ghosts beneath his skin and ooze into his very bones, and there would be no stopping it, not until he became a spectre in his own body, a watery shell of terror pulling everything under.

He stumbled out of his room and wandered like a drowning man across Mirkwood’s gilded corridors and pillars adorned with splintered coronals. He rounded a corner and into a wooded pavilion, and there Thranduil was, stoic and tall and lit by the moon. 

“I’m…” he attempts, sounding wrecked. “I am... sorry, Elvenking. I - I did not mean to disturb you.” 

“But evidently, there is something on your mind, Bard.” 

“I…” 

Thranduil is staring straight into him, his swishing robes falling gracefully aside as he extends his pearly pale hands toward Bard. Everything is still and cold in the wintry air, and there is concern in the tilt of Thranduil’s dark eyebrows, the curve of his mouth. A hollowness tugs at Bard’s stomach, a sudden pulsing ache shooting through his heart; he needs this, needs Thranduil, needs him here with him with the moonlight and willow trees lest the night and memories and grief suffocate him live, and… 

“I must have told you about… about the death of my young wife, four years ago,” he begins, his voice breaking. “She… She drowned, two hours before I found her body in the middle the lake, and —”

He can feel it, as though it is happening right now, right here — the waterlogged bloat of her rotting body against him as he drags her back to shore, far too late. He can taste that rubbery stench of death. He will always see her, in the pain, the nights, the blank darkness and the blinding, wordless panic; it will never truly go away. She will always be there with the horror of her distorted, mutilated face. She will always be there in the icy water, screaming —

Thranduil’s hands are around his, solid and warm and dry, and Bard hangs onto him, trembling, like a lifeline. He cannot seem to breathe at all, as though he is the one underwater. 

He does not realise that he is crying until Thranduil’s arms are around his shoulders. Thranduil’s hand is against his face, soft as light, smearing his tears away. 

“I know…” Thranduil murmurs. The sweet fall of his hair curls, gently, around his blurred senses, a wordless acceptance of his pain. “I had a wife too, once… I know…” 

“Please don't leave me,” is all he can muster in quivering whimper. 

Then he is kissing Thranduil, or Thranduil is kissing him, and it is warm and impossibly tender and over as quickly as it began. Bard twines his fingers through Thranduil’s hair and presses into the cradle of his arms, needing more of him, more of this warmth, this exquisite aching comfort… 

Everything is lurid, dizzying and spinning, and the world swims like a sea in the darkness. But there is the firm heat of Thranduil’s hand in his, guiding him, leading him, and they are moving along the corridors and back to his chambers. And there is Thranduil’s voice, just by his ear, whispering from a dream, _it is alright_ … 

The air is melting into strange, amorphous colours and he cannot quite see straight, and he cannot breathe. It is all too much. He needs, he needs — 

He remembers the dim fall of his exhausted body against the bed. He remembers Thranduil holding him, close and safe and strong. He remembers… 

_Thranduil, Thranduil, Thranduil…_

—————

**Four.**

Bard’s kitchen smells of freshly cut greens, onions on the fry, and rich stew simmering. The fire is warming the crisp late morning air, and the breeze is blue and vernal. He can hear Tilda laughing outside in the flowers and the sun. He can make out the splash of Bain’s boots in a shallow pond, and Sigrid chattering away. 

He leans against the counter with his tray of newly chopped potatoes and breathes it all in, slow and deep. 

Between politics and alarm and war and rebuilding, he cannot remember the last time he has ever felt this… still. 

Thranduil is busy at the stove, keeping the stew on the boil and stirring new ingredients into the delicately steaming pot. He has dressed down today, his hair gathered in a lazy ponytail with wispy strands falling out through the sides. Tilda has woven blue flowers into his hair that morning. Sunlight filters in through the window and makes his skin shine, gentle and golden and gorgeous. 

He looks like springtime. 

And as much as Bard can scarcely believe it, here he is, in the kitchen with Bard, preparing lunch for the ( _their?_ ) children with him. Here he is, the great and beautiful Elvenking of Mirkwood, with the daylight in his hair and a smile softening his lips, pushing his sleeves back to marinate potatoes that Bard has just diced. 

Thranduil catches Bard’s gaze and the edges of his eyes are crinkled and tender. He stills for a moment, looking at Bard almost speculatively, and Bard tilts his head in question. Thranduil simply smiles and walks up to him, wrapping an arm around him and pulling him close. 

“I love you,” Thranduil whispers, firm fingers angling his face up for a kiss. “I love you, Bard.” 

Bard cannot breathe. He cannot seem to move. He just stares up at Thranduil, unable to speak. A sweet, warm ache throbs against his chest and heats the back of his eyes, trembling through his toes. 

“We must finish cooking the potatoes soon, or Tilda will be hungry,” Thranduil says, cupping Bard’s cheek and kissing him on the forehead. 

Bard just nods, watching Thranduil turn back to work, watching the familiar curve of Thranduil’s shoulders, the graceful strength beneath them. Noon is high in the sky and Bard is grinning like a fool. His feet are singing with every step and he is light as air. Inside, his heart is starting up a furious, wondrous beat. It thrums through his veins, hums through his fingertips and pounds through his breath. 

_He loves me, he loves me, he loves me…._

—————

**Five.**

It is not quite morning when Bard wakes. 

The sky is colourless and still mostly dark, and a wind rustles through the tree outside his window. His ceiling is the shady ink of soft pre-dawn. 

Thranduil is slumbering against him, his beautiful head on his shoulder and his mouth against the hollow of his throat. His silky hair is splayed all over Bard’s pillow. Bard runs his hand up his back, brushes his thumb over his shoulder blade, his cheek. He curls his hand into Thranduil’s hair, feeling the slow, sensuous strands slip softly across his knuckles. 

When he wakes again later, it will because of Tilda jumping on his bed, or Bain brandishing the curtains open with high-pitched war cries. Maybe Thranduil will not be too busy today, and they will bake bread together and boil up hot broths to warm everyone up. He will have to attend a meeting with several distinguished tradesmen of Laketown in the afternoon, and Thranduil has business with a delegation from Rivendell to deal with. They will both return to Bard’s little house in the evening for supper and a crackling fire, until the next season arrives and it will be the turn of the halls of Mirkwood to be home, and Bard will see Legolas again.

Thranduil shifts contentedly in his arms, settling against him with a sigh. 

Bard holds him closer. 

He cannot believe this is real. 

—————

**One.**

A velvety petal brushes against Bard’s cheek. It turns in the air as though in slow motion, before fluttering to the ground. Littered with bright silky blossoms, the forest floor is a pastel cloud of pink and green. The morning sky is a brilliant, crystalline blue. 

A smile spreads over Bard’s face. He and takes in a lungful of clean, sweet air, and flutters his eyes shut.

“... And if you believe it, the brute called me feminine the other day like it was the most insulting thing he could think of in three seconds. Honestly, I will never get to the bottom of Dwarves and their arcane customs. They just…”

Bard turns his cheek to the sunshine and feels the yellow warmth soak through his closed eyelids. He is vaguely aware that Thranduil is complaining about something. This is not at all surprising. Besides, Thranduil is welcome to speak for as long as he likes about barbaric Dwarves and their wayward traditions, because Bard can listen to him talk forever. 

Thranduil’s steady voice… It tastes of verbal mirth, the kind that sharpens the shimmering morning light with its quiet wiles. Bard can almost feel it against his skin, keen as evening, edged with earth. Sometimes he laughs, and Bard thinks of wooded glades and willows, fair trees burnished with afternoon gold. There is a merry golden pool glittering between the boughs of the willow trees, and a cool fountain sings in the breeze. 

“... Surely, you must be in agreement with me, Bard? You have met these Dwarves. You have witnessed their outrageous behaviour and seen the sheer lack of dignity in the way they carry themselves! Yes?” 

Slowly and lazily, Bard opens his eyes to gaze up at Thranduil, and his heart skips a beat. 

The slanting sunlight is playing across his furrowed frown, his keen smirk. The green leaves overhead dapple the energetic gestures of his hands. 

And…

“You have a flower in your hair, _meleth_.” 

Just for a moment, Thranduil stares at him, mouth hanging open. His hands fall back to his sides as he gapes at Bard with his eyes wide with surprise. The little pink blossom perches right at the top of his head, basking in the sunlight. 

So Bard leans forward, cups his lovely cheek, and kisses him. 

_… Can your heart conceal... what the mind of love reveals?_  
_Mind of Love_ , kd lang

**Author's Note:**

> this was so fun oh my 
> 
> shoutout to all the other participants, and Bérénice for organising!! 
> 
> find me on twitter @wearetheland


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